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Rhetorical Questions on IDN TLD Approaches

With the IGF underway, there's a lot of discussion surrounding Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). There has been lots of great progress in IDN technology with IE7 and Firefox browsers now fully IDN-Aware, strong IDN registrations and websites behind them. Now that many of the hurdles to implementation have been addressed to where the technology is either currently available to most internet users, or shall be soon, we now focus to the other aspects of IDN... more

TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation - Part I

The past year has brought a rise in so-called "open and chartered" top-level domains (TLDs). Like the traditional open TLDs of .COM, .NET, and .ORG, these namespaces encourage large-scale registrations, but they differ in that they limit who can legitimately register domains. So far, many thousands of their registrations seem to break the stated rules. It's therefore worth thinking through their respective enforcement efforts -- before the situation gets out of control. more

New Paper Discusses Global City TLD’s in the Public Interest

"The Internet's impact on cities grows daily as it electronically enables the meeting, movement, and exchange of people, ideas, products, and cultures at a range and frequency never before possible, creating what Marshall McLuhan called the 'global village'." So begins a paper in which Dr. Michael Gurstein and I present a short review of the history of TLDs and the negative effects their omission from the Internet's naming schema is having on cities. We then identify 12 areas where city-TLDs will benefit Global Cities if planned and developed in the public interest. more

Making Sense of the Domain Name Market - and Its Future

With ever more TLDs, where does it make sense to focus resources? After four years and a quadrupling of internet extensions, what metrics continue to make sense in the domain name industry? Which should we discard? And how do you gain understanding of this expanded market? For registries, future success is dependent on grasping the changes that have already come. For registrars, it is increasingly important to identify winners and allocate resources accordingly. The question is: how? more

Slovaks Worry About the Future of Their Country’s .SK TLD

Almost every country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) has had some kind of rough and clumsy start at its sunrise. Internet was young, everything was new, and whoever took the national TLD first, got power over it. The situation eventually sorted out, and now most ccTLDs are drama free, well-operated for the benefit of people and the Internet communities in those countries. Unfortunately, not in Slovakia. more

WHOIS: How Could I Have Been So Blind?

A colleague was recently commenting on an article by Michele Neylon "European Data Protection Authorities Send Clear Message to ICANN" citing the EU Data Commissioners of the Article 29 Working Party, the grouping a determinate factor In the impending death of WHOIS. He is on point when he said: What the European Data Protection authorities have not yet put together is that the protection of people's mental integrity on the Internet is not solely due to the action of law enforcement... more

Why Colombia Is About to Make a Colossal Mistake With .CO

Ten years ago, the most effective branding exercise the internet registry market has ever seen began. And to celebrate the anniversary, its owner is going to strangle it. At the ICANN meeting in Montreal this month, the Government of Colombia booked a meeting room, prepared a Powerpoint presentation and invited representatives of the world's largest registry operators to attend. Once there, they were offered a rare and valuable opportunity: to take over running of the .co registry. more

Who is Blocking WHOIS?

On April 16 ICANN issued a breach notice to Turkish Registrar Alantron for not consistently providing access to its WHOIS database via Port 43, a command-line query location that all Registrars are required to supply under conditions of their contract with ICANN under section 3.3.1. Four days later they issued a breach to Internet Group do Brazil for the same problem. ... The WHOIS record, as we all know, is a massive fraud with illicit parties filling records with bogus information and hiding behind anonymity. more

VeriSign’s Anti-Trust Claim Against ICANN Dismissed

ICANN confirmed today that Judge A. Howard Matz of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California has issued an order dismissing VeriSign, Inc.'s anti-trust claims against ICANN, with prejudice. In dismissing VeriSign's anti-trust claims, Judge Matz noted that VeriSign had failed in its first amended complaint to sufficiently allege an anti-trust claim. more

Sweden Makes its TLD Zone File Publicly Available

Patrik Wallström writes to report that as of today, IIS (The Internet Foundation In Sweden) has made the zone files for .se and .nu domain names publicly available for the first time. "The underlying reason for making the zone files for .se and .nu available is our endeavour at IIS to promote transparency and openness. IIS has made the assessment that the zone files do not contain any confidential information and, therefore, there is no reason not to make this information available." more

13th Registration Operations Workshop: Join Us Online on June 4th, 2024

As a member of the ROW Planning Committee, I am writing this post on behalf of the Committee and welcome all community members to join us on June 4th. We are celebrating ROW's 10th anniversary! A decade of collaboration and inspiration! Thank you to the incredible community that has fueled this journey! more

What’s Driving Spam and Domain Fraud? Illicit Drug Traffic

Spam is not about who sent it, it's about who benefits from it. For a moment forget everything you know about filters, zombie PCs, firewalls, spoofing, viruses, beisyan algorithms, header forgery, botnets, or blacklists. These are all methods for sending spam or preventing spam delivery. None of these explain why spam is sent and for far too long all the attention has been paid to the effects and not the driving force. Under the endless onslaught of junk mail it is easy to feel that the goal of the game is send spam and annoy us all. more

What Did we Learn Today About .XXX From IFFOR Tax Return

The 2011 Tax return for IFFOR has been filed and our friend George Kirikos of Leap.com found it.. IFFOR's tax return is important for two reasons. First IFFOR return shows us how how much money the non-profit, which is suppose to receive $10 for each .XXX registration, actually received from ICM the operator of the .XXX TLD and how IFFOR spent the money. Second the return is important to see how the money ICM the registry operator of the .XXX TLD paid to IFFOR matches up to ICM reported number of .XXX domain name registrations. more

Domain Registry Locking Program: It Is There for a Reason, So Why Not Use It?

At the beginning of last year, MarkMonitor participated in VeriSign's beta program to test server-level protections which were designed to mitigate the potential for unintended domain name changes, deletions and transfers. When VeriSign finally released their Registry Locking Program to all registrars, I expected to see the owners of highly trafficked sites flocking to this new offering. However, after a review of the top 300 most highly trafficked sites, I was shocked to uncover that less than 10% of these valuable domains were protected using these newly available security measures. more

Third-Level Domain Name Hijacking

A new type of domain-name hijacking is being carried out unnoticed. It involves third-level domain-names associated with affiliate programs. If you had been an online affiliate of, say, company xyz.com, your affiliate Internet address could have looked like YourCompanyName.xyz.com. more

Industry Updates

2025 .US Town Hall Registration Open: Explore Industry Trends & Policy Insights

DNIB Reports 378.5 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q3 2025

Understanding DNSSEC: Best Practices and Implementation Challenges

Radix Premiums Surge as .Tech Leads the Charge in H1 2025

Radix selects Tucows Registry as Back-End Registry Services Provider

DNIB Reports 371.7 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q2 2025

Radix Releases UA Readiness Study on E-Commerce Platforms to Support Broader Internet Compatibility

Domain Name Industry Brief Reports 368.4 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q1 2025

Radix’s Premium Domains Surge in H2 2024, Led by .Fun Boom

Domain Name Industry Brief Reports 364.3 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q4 2024

Domain Name Industry Brief Reports 362.3 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q3 2024

2024 .US Town Hall Registration Open: Explore Industry Trends & Policy Insights

Radix Achieves Record Premium Domain Sales in H1 2024, Led by Surging Interest in .Fun

Domain Name Industry Brief Reports 362.4 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q2 2024

Domain Name Industry Brief Reports 362.4 Million Domain Name Registrations in Q1 2024